1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for controlling data recording and/or reproducing operations, and, more particularly, to a method of protecting data saved to a recording medium and a disk drive using the method, in which unauthorized access to data saved to the recording medium is prevented using password-locked disk formatting.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, an optical disk is classified according to its purpose as (1) a read-only optical disk, such as a compact disc-read only memory (CD-ROM), (2) a recordable optical disk, such as a compact disc-recordable (CD-R), and (3) a rewritable optical disk, such as a compact disc-rewritable (CD-RW). Each kind of optical disk has a distinctive purpose and has been widely used in recent years. With the development of high-capacity disks, such as digital versatile disks (DVDs), optical disks have offered the ability to record not only PC data but also various kinds of video or audio data.
However, because access to data saved to the optical disks is generally available to everyone, data saved to the optical disks may not be protected from illegal copying, and security and integrity thereof cannot be guaranteed.
In an attempt to solve such problems, Korean Laid-Open Patent Application No. 2001-55057, titled “Method of Restricting Access to Recordable Optical Disks,” discloses recording a password to a specific area of an optical disk when data are recorded on the optical disk, comparing a password that is input when data saved to the optical disk are reproduced with the password recorded to the specific area of the optical disk, and allowing access to the data saved on the optical disk only when the received password is identical to the recorded password.
However, because data are recorded on the optical disk without encryption, if the password recorded to the specific area of the optical disk is accessed and decrypted, the data saved to the optical disk may be easily accessed.